Iniko G. Johnson

This weekend was the eleventh anniversary of the death of a really good friend of mine, Iniko Glessie Johnson. She was killed in a car accident April 2, 2000 and I still remember it like it was yesterday. I'm famous for googling people, but sadly I've never seen anything about her online except the award that her college, started in honor of her and the other occupants of the vehicle. So, I figured that since I have my own site...why not add something in her memory.

She lived around the corner from me all of her life, but I never actually spoke to her until we ended up at the same high school. She joined the track team for about a week and that's where we had our first interaction. She said, "You're that guy who lives around the corner that always walks to the train, right?" He is I and I am him. "You dummy, don't you know that you can just catch the bus at the corner and it takes you all the way to school. How'd you think I was getting there."

From that point on, she designated herself as my unwanted older sister. She turned out to be a "braidologist" and cornrowed my hair for me. She could sing, dance and do hair. She was also pretty damn smart. She majored in Math and Dance. Math, as she would say, was her fail safe so that she could get a job. She did her best to teach me to dance, but no one's perfect. All I learned was how to snap my fingers on beat. Meanwhile she put on one of the best high school dance shows I've ever seen, Rhythm and Moves. She and her two friends did a Michael Jackson tribute that was way ahead of its time.

She invited me into her home, her family and her life and she was the bright side to a lot of dark days. I was severely depressed throughout high school for many reasons and unbeknownst to me, she felt obligated to try and get me to see the bright side of life. Knowing how badly I needed money, she convinced our community service administrator to pay me on the side AND give me community service credit so that I could fulfill the high school requirement. Her mother fed me and let me crash at their house pretty much daily and I must say that whatever her goal was with me, I think she achieved it.

At her funeral someone read the poem, "The Dash" that suggests that more important than the birth and death dates on a tombstone is the dash (what was done) in between those dates. The church comfortably sat at least 250 people and not only was it filled to capacity but so was the basement, overflow and the outside lawn in front of the church where people gathered who could not fit inside the building. Apparently she did a lot with just the eighteen years between those two dates.